Alright, here it goes! It sure took a long time.
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Turn 127 ------------
I use the headband to discern where the rest of the group is.
| You focus on your headband and try to locate the others of your group. The band complies surprisingly quickly, and when you activate it you can immediately see brightly glowing green dots in the distance, even through the walls of your cockpit. You steer your mech towards them and can soon see the truck near the crater. The figures of your teammates keep glowing, and you suddenly realise you're beginning to involuntarily turn towards the nearest team member in view, whether it's with thoughts, sight, or body. You close your eyes, but the figures can still be seen, drawing your attention towards them.
I wrap my underwear chain around my lower body to cover up the hole in my shorts, can't have the equipment hanging out, you know? Then I try to get rid of the headache.
| You wrap the underwear chain about your lower body, finally finding a use for it. The result looks embarassingly similar to a diaper, but you can't do anything about it.
| You then focus on your headache, trying to drive it away, and actually succeed! The pain in your head is gone. But it suddenly reappears in your left arm, restricting its movements and draining its strength. In the course of the hour, it keeps fading and reappearing in various locations while you try to get rid of it, stopping in the legs.
I attempt to dominate the mind of the enemy, making them ineffective in combat.
| You focus your mind and try to affect the unseen enemy, but suddenly fall deeper into your trance, furthening your separation from the material plane. You realise this is happening when the mental images suddenly begin to fade and the enemy's mind disappears out of reach.
| In desperation, you focus all of your willpower and manage to bring yourself to the real world, exhausted like a fish that swam up a waterfall.
I assist the troops as best I can.
| Despite your flammable body coverage, you bravely rush to the help of the burning soldiers, using all available materials to put out the hellish flames they're engulfed by. A small squad car drives up, and the driver climbs out holding two large chemical fire extinguishers. You quickly snatch one from him, and unload the sparkling clear contents of the tank into a nearby large fire. Whatever was the fuel for the flaming inferno that broke loose here, the oversized watergun in your hands (though it's unlikely that there's only water in it) is pretty effective at negating it. The fire quickly dies down, revealing a charred corpse and a partially burned survivor sitting under a piece of wreckage from the fighter. You don't stop there, and keep fighting the fire with everyone else until it no longer threatens anyone. You gain some insights into firefighting.
I fly back to the crash site by following the heat trail left by the dwarf and Neo. That or the sheer heat coming from the crash site.
| Finding the heat of the burning chemicals at the crash site is hardly a problem for you. You fly up and quickly gain speed, but are suddenly hit by a gust of strong wind and have to spend a lot of time fighting it to get back on course. By the time you arrive, the fire is largely put out, but the area where it was burning is mostly a big white-out for you.
I use the truck's broken radio and other unimportant parts lying around to build a radio that we can use to listen to the communication of both sides.
| As you take out the truck's radio, a powerful feeling engulfs you, an unfamiliar desire to create something wondrous, no matter the cost to anyone else! After you emerge from the strange condition the feeling put you in, you only remember yourself running around wrenching various items and parts out of various places around you. You look beside yourself, and see a strange metal box. It's hexagonal, roughly a foot in diameter, 10cm thick, and polished to reflect light like nothing you've seen before. Your shining shield is like a tarnished penny compared to the brilliant shine of the box. You examine it, and don't see any sort of opening, button, or handle on its smooth surface. You think you can hear a faint low hum at the lowest threshold of your hearing emanating from the box, but the box does not vibrate. You don't know what the box does, but whatever you went through to create it has improved you - you suddenly feel a lot more knowledgeable about electronics.
i will go to crash site and i will look for that enemy. time to try the new weapon…
| You decide not to risk lightning damage to the truck, and run northwards in a mundane manner. Your heavy gear slows you down, and the darkness isn't all too helpful, but you are nevertheless able to eventually reach the crash site. You see Neo helping a few troopers to finish off the last remnants of a once enormous fire.
To the Crash Site!
| You turn to run to the site, but suddenly remember the Ashcraver. For some reason you can't bear the thought that the beautiful sword will be left out here… You return, and grab it by the handle, then turn to run… except now you can't run. At best, you can slowly drag yourself along the desert, huffing and puffing. You're tired now, and have barely walked a hundred meters away from the truck.
I try to detect the unknown enemy.
| You bend your mind on the situation around you, but even while unconscious you cannot detect the presence of any enemy. You clearly lack the telepathic ability required for such a feat.
(RTTAI:{2}) I practice my strength, using the truck as weight.
| You walk to the truck, and practice lifting its rear end. It's heavy enough, so you get some workout, but a sudden burst of flame that seemingly comes from everywhere at once changes your priorities to getting the hell away.
(RTTAI:{1}) I summon a massive fireball to practice my fire manipulation.
| You decide to get some serious practice with your ring, and focus on the fire manipulation it grants you. Channelling all of your willpower, you order the demon soul to create an enormous fireball, as huge and hot as is possible. Aiming into the distance, you concentrate and give the order to
FIRE!!! Thin lines of piercingly bright light briefly flash before your eyes, and then suddenly all of your surroundings turn into flame.
| Miraculously, the three-meters-across fireball actually took off and didn't so much as singe your hair as it engulfed you, possibly due to some innate backlash protection of the ring. The truck it flew next to was less lucky, suffering some moderate damage to its nonmetallic components. Rooster had to beat a hasty retreat when he was confronted with the flames, but ultimately suffered no lasting damage, though it did cause him some pain. The other people weren't anywhere near the fireball, and barely felt any warmth from it. You learn something from your experience - to never ask for "as huge as possible" again. Despite the largely negative effect of the event, you gain some insights into fire control.
<Travel Mode: Clan Smoke Jaguar Base>
| The valley borders suddenly end, the relatively narrow passage you've been following opens upon a vast lifeless plain. You think you can see something like a lake in the distance, but you're unsure of what you see. You try to follow the direction north, but the trace of the key is too weak to follow precisely, and you walk in erratic zigzagging patterns.
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NPC Actions:
Allied: The dwarf scours the field for anything not bolted down.
| Barely caring to avoid the flames, the dwarf happily runs through the inferno and picks out an odd-looking metal scalemail, that seems to fit him. He's too busy admiring it to notice that the clothes under his armor began to burn. Luckily, Neo was nearby to douse him before any damage was done.
The bats stay where they are and do nothing.
Neutral: Some of the troopers remain to care for the wounded, while most of the rest run up the hill to find the enemy soldier who fired the missiles.
| The soldiers charge up the hill, shouting coarsely and shooting at nothing in particular. They soon reach the place where the missiles originated from, but their disappointed shouts indicate that they found nothing.
| They continue the search, but they cannot find a thing in this darkness. The 'mechs rise to the top of the hill as well, and scan the surroundings with their sensors - still nothing.
Enemy: …
| Whatever the enemy was doing, there's no trace of him now. He either made a very very quick run for it, or hid somewhere and is planning his next move.
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Background: [5+2] A quick look at the dwarf's scalemail reveals it to be a heavy infantryman's vest, or rather the remains of one, destroyed by fire. Only the metallic base of the vest has remained, while all the cloth and padding materials have burned away. The dwarf is still happy with his acquisition. Frelock can still feel shreds of thoughts coming from the enemy - he's still within his range. Boksi noticed that his fireball went off towards the mountain, and splattered in a bright plume on a cliff face in the distance. You can't tell what kind of damage it did.
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Environment: Night. (-1 sight, accuracy, dodge, and movement to everyone who depends on light to see) The air is cold. (statistic penalties to constitution)
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Free items: Light infantry armor vest: Somewhere in the LV area 2. Can protect upper body. +1 against pierce damage.
Various assorted rocks and small leftover debris from the truck in LV area 2.
Unidentified yellowish box embedded in a hillside in LV area 3.
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Artifacts: "A massive, massive, MASSIVE sword. It is three meters long, 1'3'' (~40cm) wide, and dazzingly bright. Its fine steel has been polished to reflect light like a mirror. Its one edge is curved, jagged at the hilt, the other is straight and so sharp it could probably slice adamantine blocks like salami. Down the center of the sword, which is at least 2'' thick, runs a hollow slit 3'' wide, in which yeat another, smaller and straighter sword is concealed. The entire surface of both swords, except of course the sharp cutting edges, is finely engraved with uncountable images, among which the launching of the Challenger, world war II, a nuclear explosion, a trainwreck, and a rotary excavator. The hilt itself (being at the same time the hilt of the smaller sword) is decorated with gold and emeralds you can only assume you've taken from someone, arranged in beautiful patterns, and the handle is woven with three lines - one is a scaly snake with two small rubies in the eyes, and two seem awfully like DNA strands. You get a feeling you could decipher the human genome if you looked closely enough. The guard of the hilt is exquisitely detailed as well, but right down the senter of it, spanning the breadth of the sword, is a solid rectangular golden plate, with the single word: ""ASHCRAVER"" deeply embossed onto it. The entire thing is so immeasurably brilliant, you almost don't want to touch it fearing it'll stick to your hand and corrupt you like some magic ring. Overcoming this fear, you pick it up. Despite its size, it is relatively lightweight, relatively, of course, to anything else so large and made of steel. (+2 to damage, +1 to attack, -1 agility)
The second form is a smaller (comparatively) blade, that together with the folding hilt guard looks like an overgrown sai. It's also exquisitely detailed, but lighter. (+1 to damage).
The Ashcraver seems to accumulate the energy released by the deaths it causes. The process is admittedly rather slow, but has good uses."
"The ring consists of a toroidal adamantine core surrounded by a shell of tempered steel with thin bands of gold along the rims of the ring. Set into an adamantine frame on its top is a Star Sapphire imbued with the dark soul of a Greater Demon, under absolute control of the wearer. The steel surface of the ring is covered by three hundred tiny tiles of granite, engraved with images of various creatures, all being dead.
The wearer of the ring may call onto the soul of the demon, which can manipulate darkness and fire - anything from direct projection to creating sentient forms to giving protection against.
The wearer can also give an order to summon a creature mad with rage (any creature from the DF world you have seen), which will use up one or several of the stone tiles, depending on the power of the creature. The tiles may be restored, but only through personally killing sentient creatures with bare hands and absorbing their essence with the ring, which also adds that creature to the ""summonable creatures"" list.
The price to pay for all this power is a constant aura of darkness that any living being will feel (and will react accordingly), and the wearer may, under critical stress, give in and become controlled by the trapped demon soul.
(No passive bonuses. In a single turn, you can either perform an act of darkness/fire manipulation (including creating a prolonged effect), or summon a creature/creatures, but not both. The magnitude and potential of both depend on your skill - the ring grants ""basic level"" only. You can only absorb the essence of a creature you killed with your own bare hands, and only if it died last turn, at most.)
Currently applied effects: (-1 to relevant ability for every active effect)
Darkfire halberd - haft of materialized darkness.
Shadow Warp - Boksi's shadow invisibility."
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Locations: Planet Wayside V: The planet seems to be barren as a whole. The sky is green here, and the air is cold. Or maybe it's just autumn here.
Large Valley: A rather dull and barren, though very large, rocky valley covered by reddish clay soil with patches of some unknown weeds or moss. Filled with broken rock and debris. Sloping mountains or plateaus many kilometers tall seem to surround it.
Sub-area 1: The place you initially appeared at.
Sub-area 2: Where your truck was destroyed by an aerospace fighter (and later rebuilt). Mostly everyone is here.
Sub-area 3: Somewhere far north of Area 2 - the fighter crashlanded there. And subsequently exploded, leaving a large crater and killing the crew of the two scout buggies sent by Fusiliers. Frelock, Neo, and the dwarf are here, as well as a convoy of trucks, light mechs, and infantry - now in disarray and on fire.
Fusiliers' main camp: A small military camp set up amidst the hills in the large valley. Mechs patrol its perimeter. All of you are at a spot some distace away from it.
"Overlord"-class Dropship "Bullrun": A big egglike spaceship designed to go to and from a planet's surface. Armed with several turrets and protected by thick armor. It's been attacked on its descent and is undergoing repairs.
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Vehicles: Medium battlemech, 45 tons. Armament: Armor: Damage:
Type: Battlemech. Medium-class, 45 tons. Capabilities: Jump Jets (piloting skill check required for every use) Armament: Imperator Code Red LB 10-X AC(30/30), two Victory 23R Medium Lasers, one Shigunga LRM-10 rack(12x10/12x10). Protection: Ablative ferro-fibrous plating. State: Moderate to heavy armor damage on center and left torso, minor damage on left arm, armor destroyed on right leg. Risen from the ashes, this is a truck rebuilt from the remains of the last one. Has flimsy rear suspension, only front wheel drive, slap-patched brakes, and no platform on the back. And no cabin roof or passenger seat, plus a sizeable hole punched through the driver's seat.
Poll
32 (37.2%)
Author
Topic: RTD - Multiworld Madness! Final Update: Parts 1 and 2, out of ~4. (Read 409581 times)